York Street Interchange

摘要

Belfast is Northern Ireland's major transport hub and the main transport gateway to the rest of the united Kingdom and Europe. It is the focal point for a number of the Key Transport Corridors (KTC) that collectively form part of the strategic road network managed by Transport NI. The existing York Street junction is located on the Eastern Seaboard KTC just to the north of Belfast city centre. Here, strategic traffic movements on the Eastern Seaboard KTC conflict with other traffic movements to and from the M3 motorway and local traffic movements into and out of Belfast city centre. The conflict between strategic and local traffic movements is presently controlled by a complex arrangement of traffic signals that includes four signalised junctions at York Street, York Link, Nelson Street and Great George's Street. The overall signalised "box" created by these four signalised junctions is known as the York Street junction. The capacity of the existing York Street junction is limited by both the volumes of competing traffic flows (over 100,000 traffic movements per day) and the various physical constraints at this location. These physical constraints include adjacent residential housing, commercial, retail and industrial properties, elevated rail infrastructure carried on the Dargan Bridge and the capacity of approaching roads including the Westlink, the M2 motorway and the M3 Lagan Bridge. This causes undue congestion and thereby delays for freight, public transport and private vehicles, particularly at times of peak demand.